We Remain
by OnceUponASomeday
Summary: Sometimes you need to just shut the world out and hide under the covers. Deacon and Rayna.


**Just a little one. I want to do nothing but write thanks to these recent episodes...and the upcoming ones that I'm adopting brace position for in advance.**

**If it's of some enhancement, I listened to a song called Clocks Go Forward by James Bay while writing this. It has nothing to do with much of anything Deacon and Rayna related, but the feel of it is how this story feels to me.**

Some days all you can do is hold on.

Some days your fingers bleed, some days they grasp and grab at anything that will stop you from sinking under. Maybe they will break, and maybe you'll fall. But you are still here. The light still floods your eyes when you open them, breath still fills your lungs.

You are still here.

He is here too, lying next to you, his head on your pillow. You know he is alive, you can feel his heartbeat against your skin, and yet you speak his name, the need to see him wake and look upon your face - just to be sure - overwhelming you until you feel sick.

'Hey,' he says as he stirs, his voice raspy and tired.

'I'm sorry I woke you,' you say, your relief immediately turning to guilt at yielding to your own needs, but he smiles, his eyes still closed. When they open, they focus on you intently.

'I'm not. Not when I wake up and you're in my arms.'

You snuggle in closer, his reward for a decade and a half of waiting for this to be his reality again, for you to be real, not a memory that evaporates when he emerges from heady dreams of you together, ghosts and regrets in his bed where you should be.

You're here now. How long will it be that he can stay with you?

You run your hand up his arm and it comes to rest on his chest, over the place where his skin and bones keep his heart safe. You let it stay there, your breathing slowing as you count the beats, steady and constant. _Just keep beating_, you implore, and you could swear you feel it skip in response. You look up at Deacon and he smiles at you, knowing what you're thinking, what you're doing. He leans down and kisses you, his lips lingering on yours, breathing into your mouth.

You savour him, fingers in his hair, and when you break away and wriggle free of his grip, his face contorts in confusion, his lips still puckered. He laughs when you disappear under the crisp white sheets; they smell like cool air and the two of you, a scent created from the tangling of your limbs each night. It is age-old familiar to you, and as you breathe it in it reassures you, filling up the cavern of despair in your belly that appears so often of late.

'Hi,' he whispers when he slides down to join you.

'Hi,' you reply, as though he is new, as though you are too, your greetings those of still-shy lovers. This thing you have, you and Deacon, is as fresh as the first day you saw each other. He is your flushed skin, your butterflies, the sweet ache in your chest.

The sheets settle over you so that you are enveloped together in a cotton cocoon, muted morning light seeping in to join you, and for a while you can believe that here everything is pure, nothing is broken; there is nothing to fear. It is just you and Deacon, and his nose is nuzzling yours. He slides a knee between your legs and you languidly inch as close to him as you can, wrapping your arms around his neck and draping your leg over his hip.

You kiss him so slowly it is perhaps wicked of you, and he groans, his fingertips raking through your hair and making you shiver. His other arm loops around your waist and holds you against him, and when finally you both pull away you are a little dizzy.

'Good mornin' baby,' he says in a low voice that means he's turned on to all hell, and you purr in response, rubbing your body with his in a way you know will drive him crazy. You can feel exactly how crazy, and you dig your nails into him a little, but you want to draw the delicious anticipation out. Deacon is on board with such pleasurable torture, and he lowers his head and sucks on your neck, in just the place that makes your toes curl.

'Mmm,' you hum, and you feel his smile. He bites you playfully, and you seize a fistful of his hair. _Damn_.

And then he is looking at you again, so intimately you forget any intention of teasing him. There is such contentment in his eyes, so much love, and your throat closes up, your eyes quick to prick with tears. One solitary drop falls, and his thumb follows, oh so gently, the path it traces; he kisses the place just below your cheek where it pools. You taste the salt on his lips when he moves to your mouth, and your effort not to choke out a sob is valiant, but you fail all the same. He rests his forehead against yours, understanding, and while you grit your teeth and ride out the burning flash of grief that overcomes you, he rubs circles over your shoulder.

_I'm here_, he tells you, with no words at all. You never have needed many words.

The wave subsides, and you are left crawling in the embers of your pain, but he smoothes your hair back from your face and murmurs soothing nothings to you that mean everything. You burrow further into the centre of the bed and he comes with you, holding your head to his chest where you are safe. You stay this way awhile, in no hurry. Outside of this haven every moment is heavy with the swing of a pendulum, each second held at ransom; they taunt you, seconds, minutes, hissing in your ear that they may run out for him soon. The clocks tick loudly these days.

Maybe you'll stay here forever. Maybe here it will never happen, he will be with you always and you will be happy in this bed that is warmed by the sun.

And yet you know you lie to yourself even to wish for it. You can't pretend you don't see how his muscle has begun to waste away, how his skin grows just a little paler with each day. He coughs more viciously now, tires easily, and the shadows under his eyes no longer fade with a coffee and a hot shower. His body is starting to fail him, and if you were to say it terrifies you, it would be an almost laughable understatement. There is no word for the fear that courses through you, and its intensity is only increasing with every day you don't get the call you all wait so desperately for.

You know you can't stay here, that denial will only suspend you in its bubble for so long, but you don't have to leave yet. There are birds that sing on your windowsill, you their private audience, and the house is quiet and still; this dawn feels like a secret between the two of you, not yet discovered by anyone else, the day that will spill from it unwritten.

You could be anything you want, here; it could be anytime, anyplace. Maybe twenty-five years ago, the two of you as young and unspoilt as you were when you first discovered each other, when his hands first trailed freely over your skin, the slight tremble in them making you love him more than you could have ever thought possible. He'd taken so long to free you from your clothes, to peel them from your yearning body, that you'd thought you would surely die before he got you naked. If you'd known that was only the beginning of the things he could do to you, you may never have survived, may have missed the way he looked at you like you were the most precious, most wondrous thing he'd ever seen.

Back then you lived on stolen hours in a different way, your cantankerous father the gatekeeper. The ravage of disease has inherited Lamar's iron keys now; sometimes you wonder, however irrationally, if he has sent this hell to you, if the depth of his disdain could possibly be rooted so deeply that it has poisoned the ground you make your home on. If he'd had his way all those years ago you never would have looked at Deacon Claybourne, but try as he might you found your ways to escape him. You have always been thieves of time, you and Deacon; it has never belonged to you, and yet what a _love_ that has prevailed among these borrowed grains of sand.

'Do you remember the first time we ever stayed in bed all day?'

You could conjure images of so many occasions you've done just that, they could blur and twist into one hazy recollection, but you see in his eyes that he pictures that first time just as clearly as you do. Of course he does.

He lifts your hand to his lips. 'I sure do.'

You'd been in a cheap motel, he recalls, on a cheap tour you were navigating in a cheap campervan with two of Deacon's buddies who made up your band. You'd had a day off from the exhilarating slog of playing smoky bar after smoky bar, travelling through the night to the next thrilling city. You'd never been so happy in all your life - music and Deacon, your father and all that tried to stifle you miles and miles of dusty highway behind you; you were free. Free to sing, free to love, and oh God, did you love. You loved in the morning, when the sky was grey and cold, you loved in the dead of night while the van wheels whirred beneath you, your bunk so narrow you had to cling to Deacon to avoid falling out of it. You loved on the cramped stages while barmaids cajoled the crowd to tip the band, him beside you, his eyes never leaving you. You loved with ink smudges all over your hands, lyrics pouring from you both onto scraps of paper you treasure to this day.

Your one day off was in Alabama, on a steaming hot day in the height of a summer you can still smell when you close your eyes and inhale Deacon. Your bandmates were sharing the next room, and you knew they would scarper into the nearby town to throw down an all-day liquid breakfast. You woke before Deacon, allowing yourself to revel in the sight of him next to you, both of you as naked as could be, as has always been your way - there haven't been many times over the years that you've worn any form of clothing to bed with Deacon; there would be little point even if you cared to, he would have them on the floor before your head hit the pillows anyway.

You tried to slip quietly out of his embrace that morning to splash your face with cold water in the questionable little bathroom, the sweat of the half-risen sun already enough to boil your blood, but he woke the instant he felt the impending loss of you, his body tuned to you even in sleep. His strong arm pulled you back into him, his hands on you in all the places you longed for every second of every day.

'Where you goin' baby?' he growled in your ear, not really a question, and you'd forgotten anyway. He had you writhing underneath him in minutes, clawing at his back and gasping his name, and the sun bled across your skin, sheets discarded on the floor next to the bed in a messy heap. Once hadn't been enough, twice hadn't come close to quenching the terrible thirst you had for each other. Before either of you had so much as vaguely registered that day had fully broken, hours had passed and you ached so lusciously that you couldn't have moved even if you'd wanted to.

'I'm pretty sure we were both walkin' around like John Wayne that next day,' Deacon muses, his eyes crinkling at the memory. 'The boys were so onto us.'

You laugh, blushing despite the years that have passed, despite the many occasions those around you have been more than aware of your inability to keep your hands off each other.

You will never forget. Whatever happens, you will never, never forget.

'That was the day I told you I was yours, always,' you say quietly, and he cups your face in his hands, the same hands that have always made you feel secure, loved endlessly. 'Looks like my Daddy was wrong about that teenage infatuation thing fizzling out, huh?'

You bump his shoulder with yours, and he grins.

'You just can't get enough of me, admit it.' He nibbles on your earlobe and slides his hand down to your ass, squeezing it indulgently.

'You flirtin' with me Deacon?' you ask in a half-pant, and he chuckles; you feel it vibrate deep in his chest and every corner of your body is warmed.

'Maybe I am,' he says, rotating his hips into yours suggestively, and in his eye is the mischievous twinkle that has always turned you to putty in his hands.

'Oh yeah?'

He rolls you onto your back, his knees helping him to get you right where he wants you. Enough waiting. His tongue finds yours and answers for him, and you have only one last thought before you surrender to him completely.

You've made it so far. You can overcome this, just like you have everything else. The odds have never been kind to you, but screw the odds.

You were never much of a betting girl anyway.


End file.
